When it comes to collecting, many people have their own hobbies: some people like to collect posters, some people like to collect postcards, some people like to collect stamps... A variety of hobbies come in all shapes.
For all kinds of collectors, collecting and accumulating what they like is also within their means.
Although I like it, I regret giving up because I don't have enough budget, and many people have encountered such a thing.
However, in Yulin, Shaanxi Province, there is such a sixty-year-old man: because of his fascination with various historical collections, the old man has invested more than 24 million yuan in it in 45 years.
And the more than 24 million in exchange for various collections, although now combined has "more than 100 million", but the old man is poor enough to need to borrow money to maintain a basic standard of living.
So, who is this old man, and what kind of story does he have behind him?
First, curiosity opens up the "new world"
In Yulin, Shaanxi Province, in a small room, there are thousands of "treasure" collections.
The bald old man who stands in it and cherishes the historical story and origin of each collection is the "folk collector" who is over sixty years old, Liu Fuxue.
For Liu Fuxue, understanding, collecting and collecting have become his daily routine for many years.
And if you go back, as early as the age of 13, Liu Fuxue opened his "collection road" because of an accident.
For Liu Fuxue, it was just a "curiosity drive":
It was 1973, and a vigorous "agricultural village" activity was emerging throughout the country.
In the Kangjiagang Commune in Jia County, Yulin City, a group of members accidentally dug out a tattered and strangely shaped jar while working in the field.
"What is this?" The member held up the jar and asked around, seeing that no one claimed it, and a woman on the side took the can and prepared to take it home to feed the chickens.
Unexpectedly, all this was seen by a 13-year-old teenager.
And just when the woman was finished her labor and was preparing to go home, the teenager suddenly caught up with her and followed her for miles.
The jar was finally bought for 1 dime and two pounds of apples at a "high price".
The teenager who was "very curious" about the jar was Liu Fuxue, who was only 13 years old at the time.
At that time, Liu Fuxue did not know that the scientific name of this jar was "three-legged pottery mane", but intuitively thought that "this is a treasure".
However, when he took the jar home to show his parents, instead of encouraging him, the family poured a basin of cold water on him: "Isn't this a useless rag!" ”
The family's incomprehension and criticism did not dispel Liu Fuxue's enthusiasm for cultural relics.
Although he did not really understand the meaning behind the cultural relics at that time, liu Fuxue began to go back and forth between the construction site and the farmland purely by preference.
It only took him two or three years to sneak up on nearly a hundred pieces of ancient pottery of all kinds in the backyard of his home, which was spectacular at a glance.
And the person who made Liu Fuxue really realize the value of his behavior was a teacher in his high school
To this day, Liu Fuxue still remembers what the teacher said to him: "These things have great value, you must keep them well, and you can continue to work hard in the future to become a collector in the future." ”
Such a short sentence opened up a new world for Liu Fuxue: the original collection can also become a "home"!
Since then, Liu Fuxue has become more intoxicated by the collection of various ceramic cultural relics.
And came into contact with a lot of knowledge of the history of cultural relics and collecting, and really began to develop in the direction of that "collector"...
Second, the "poor days" of "only in and out"
"Once you become obsessed with collecting, you are doomed to live a poor life for the rest of your life, and sometimes you will be too poor to eat." 」
This is Liu Fuxue's understanding of collecting, and he did indeed do it:
On the 48-year-long collection road, Liu Fuxue has smashed more than 24 million yuan into it, and has a personal collection of nearly 4,000 pieces, including more than 1,000 pieces of porcelain, more than 2,000 pieces of pottery, and other kinds of cultural relics such as bracelets, jade and other jade ornaments, and so on.
Such a huge amount of money has made many people speculate whether Liu Fuxue is a "rich man".
In fact, when he first came into contact with cultural relics collection, Liu Fuxue was just an ordinary working class.
Therefore, only after each salary, Liu Fuxue will call on friends to call a few friends who also love antiques, and run to the local antique market to "buy big and buy".
Until the pocket is shy, he reluctantly returns home with the "harvest".
However, due to the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s, many people did not have such a clear concept of cultural relics and lacked a correct understanding, some precious cultural relics were discarded and sold at will by many families.
Liu Fuxue relied on "picking up leaks" again and again to accumulate his first "cultural relics assets".
In the world of literature and play, most people "rely on literature to play and cultivate culture", but Liu Fuxue often "only enters and cannot get out": in his eyes, every cultural relic is carefully selected by him and "tao".
So when he brought the cultural relics home, Liu Fuxue was basically reluctant to sell them again.
It is precisely for this reason that although the various cultural relics in the family are "extremely valuable", Liu Fuxue's family is overstretched.
In the eyes of friends and family, Liu Fuxue is an "overly stubborn" "weirdo";
As cultural relics with thousands of years of history "flowed" into the home one by one, Liu Fuxue's wife gradually began to feel unbearable:
She can accept that her husband has a hobby, but she really can't understand the "collecting value" behind these bottles and cans, let alone agree with this "family wealth" style of collection pursuit.
Therefore, after spending several years with Liu Fuxue in poverty and poverty, Liu Fuxue's wife finally chose to leave.
In the face of his wife's departure, Liu Fuxue felt both puzzled and very sad.
After that, he simply plunged into the vast ocean of cultural relics.
Third, the collection road of "sour, sweet and bitter"
In the process of collecting, Liu Fuxue also has many memorable "interesting" experiences:
In 1979, Liu Fuxue went to the local Yijun County to visit relatives and friends, and occasionally encountered local villagers digging out a porcelain vase in the soil.
Liu Fuxue, who has several years of experience in collecting, saw at a glance that this porcelain bottle was "worth a lot", so he took out all the money he carried and bought the porcelain bottle.
However, when he got the porcelain bottle, Liu Fuxue cried and realized that he had forgotten the ticket money he had prepared to go home.
In desperation, Liu Fuxue had to find the most ordinary coolie job in the local area.
After earning enough money for the return ticket, he returned home with the bottle.
And such an "embarrassing" situation has happened more than once in Liu Fuxue's body.
In 1986, Liu Fuxue, who was traveling around In Jin and Shaanxi to collect cultural relics, encountered a rare collection in Jiexiu City, Shanxi Province.
When he poured out his money to buy it, Liu Fuxue once again faced the dilemma of "no money to go home".
I had to hike for a full day and two nights before I returned home in a dusty manner.
In 1994, Liu Fuxue also spent a huge amount of more than 8,800 yuan to buy a human face jade bi from the auction house with a history of more than 4,000 years and the Longshan cultural period.
On this jade bi, one can clearly see a human face carving that resembles an "alien".
However, in Liu Fuxue's view, the carving on the jade bi should be the ancient legendary god, Nuwa.
This face jade bi has also become the "favorite" in Liu Fuxue's many collections.
Although someone later offered a high price of up to 20 million yuan and tried to buy the jade bi from him, Liu Fuxue still refused.
Not only that, this face jade bi also became the "treasure of the town hall" of the Yuyang Qianwu Museum that he later established.
In December 2007, Liu Fuxue once again received news that a villager in Guankou Village, Keng Town, Jia County, had dug up a clay pot from the ground.
Liu Fuxue quickly rushed to the local area, and after repeated confirmation, he affirmed that this clay pot was a certain funerary item in the tombs of the Han Dynasty, with a history of more than two thousand years.
He immediately made a decision and bought the clay pot back to his home.
To his surprise, just as he was concentrating on the clay pot under the light, suddenly a lump of earth-yellow object fell out of the jar.
Liu Fuxue picked it up and looked at it, this large mass of objects had teeth and limbs, and it was the dry corpse of a bat!
In Liu Fuxue's later speculations, ancient people liked to use five bats to symbolize the "five blessings".
Therefore, perhaps before the tomb owner of the Han Dynasty was buried, his family once captured five bats for him and kept them in a jar filled with wine as funerary items.
Therefore, over time, these five bats have become five dry corpses, sealed in this clay pot full of history...
Fourth, from general collection to the study of history
As mentioned above, In order to exhibit his collection, Liu Fuxue once prepared a Yuyang Qianwu Museum.
However, as a private self-built museum, Liu Fuxue's small museum is not large.
With only two cave dwellings and a small bungalow, the daily exhibition and living life are all included.
Despite its small size, the museum is full of things.
Thousands of pieces accumulated over the past 40 years have been filled by Liu Fuxue in the caves and in all corners of his home:
Ancient stone tools, bronze pottery, Song and Yuan porcelain, as well as the blue and white of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the revolutionary relics of modern times, are all placed on different shelves.
Once you step into this small museum, people seem to be able to witness the rapid retracement of the long river of history, and in the amazing number of collections, they can personally feel the thickness and vicissitudes brought about by the changes of time.
Naturally, with a large collection, Liu Fuxue will inevitably encounter thieves of cultural relics who steal them
After the opening of his museum, Liu Fuxue's treasure antiques were stolen 11 times in a year, with a loss of more than 2 million yuan.
Liu Fuxue, who is already old, cannot cover his small museum.
In desperation, Liu Fuxue had to scatter his collection, part of which was transferred to Xi'an for storage, and the other part was deposited in the bank by him.
For Liu Fuxue, the years have also made him change somewhat:
In the very beginning, Liu Fuxue, who "knows it but doesn't know why it is so", has always been "wanting to buy it when he sees what he likes";
However, with the passage of time, Liu Fuxue gradually realized that his collection was purposeless and meaningless, "purely for the sake of collecting."
Thinking of this, Liu Fuxue began to look for a goal for himself.
Soon, coming from Shaanxi, he focused his attention on the history and inheritance of northern Shaanxi civilization.
In the subsequent collection, Liu Fuxue began to focus on the search for cultural relics representing the civilization of northern Shaanxi.
And collected a lot of cultural relics about the civilization of northern Shaanxi during the Longshan culture period, such as jade cane handles and jade pig dragons, various types of Pottery Shell coins and so on.
And he also found some new "ideas" about the history and humanities of northern Shaanxi from these cultural relics:
For example, many ancient clay pots unearthed in the northern Shaanxi civilization have left jagged shape ornaments, which may be related to the people's preference for raising crocodiles at that time, and so on.
In Liu Fuxue's view, "these artifacts outlined some lines of the culture of northern Shaanxi for us at that time, allowing us to glimpse a corner of the Longshan culture at that time, and providing very important evidence for interpreting and understanding the history of northern Shaanxi." ”
In this regard, he also proudly said: "My collection is a complete history and culture book of northern Shaanxi. ”
Fifth, the direction of inheritance
However, as he grew older, Liu Fuxue also began to gradually feel inadequate:
A few years ago, Liu Fuxue, who was suffering from a variety of diseases such as hypertension and coronary heart disease, suddenly had shock and almost died.
After being rescued, Liu Fuxue began to plan to donate thousands of his cultural relics to the state.
However, because he hoped that the recipient could give him a little monetary compensation, Liu Fuxue had not been able to negotiate with various museums for many years.
For the future receiver, Liu Fuxue also put forward three requirements:
"My collection is of great value to the study of the history of northern Shaanxi, so I hope that after future donations, the other party will not sell the collection and transfer it, nor can it be appropriated for themselves, but will be displayed permanently so that they can reflect the value."
Today, Liu Fuxue, who is already sixty years old, has to recuperate at home due to an accidental fall in his leg.
And because he could not make ends meet for many years, Liu Fuxue also had to borrow 50,000 yuan from his daughter, who was already married, to live.
"Obsessed with collecting, you have to live a poor life all your life, and sometimes you can't even eat."
Many years ago, his wife had enough of this kind of poor life and left this family with thousands of pots of money, but Liu Fuxue didn't care, as long as he was with his antiques every day, this day was happy.
In the face of others' doubts, Liu Fuxue still said happily: "Although the days are hard today, I still don't regret engaging in the road of cultural relics collection." ”
The years are hurried, and under the shadow of 48 years, it is an old man's persistence and persistence in history.
Perhaps, this persistence seems to be less understood by the world, but this persistence is admirable. After all, how many people can stick to a hobby for decades and devote all their energy?
Naturally, the desire and sense of responsibility for the historical and cultural inheritance of northern Shaanxi may be the reason why this old man can strive to persist to this day.
It's just that this road, maybe he will have to go for a while...